Minimalism and Life

Minimalism seems to be the latest "in" word at the moment,  living the simple life, decluttering etc etc.  I did that for quite a while, whenI moved to Spain hubby and I took 3 huge suitcases and that was it, we bought a few odds and sods when we were there I couldnt do without a coffee maker or microwave, but our apartment was furnished really sparcely in fact a little too sparcely, I missed all my books.  When we came back to the Uk supposedly for 6 weeks and here 5 years later we are still here, we got back into the habit of buying stuff and we had promised ourselves this was the trap we were not going to fall into again.  Now I have so much junk all over the place, and really it is the time to carry on decluttering.  I had a phase earlier on this year where I tried and boy did I get rid of some stuff, well its gonna be happening again.  I changed how I see this house too, I dont really like it much though I dont hate it, its just too characterless.  I love plants and yet they dont grow well in this house and everywhere else I have been they do just great.  I dont know what it is about where I live it just doesnt hold much interest to me, the town is pretty characterless too.  I love old buildings, old houses and basically old stuff though I do like the modern twist where everything has its place.  My cupboards inthe kitchen are very orderly and recently I made sure I put all left over items in jars and labelled them rather than having stuff in half opened packets.  I worked a bit on my wardrobe too and got rid of a lot of things in there, Im not quite finished yet I will soon have only clothes that fit well, that go together, and clothes that have np holes in etc etc.  I am going to dye some black things black again but Im a bit worried that it will stain the washing machine.  Has anyone had any experience of this at all?  I have a few bits of knitwear that I love and are in excellent condition but seem to have lost a bit of that blackness, they dont seem to have faded in places just seem to look different and to be honest I love them and I dont really want to throw them out.  Ive sorted out all my jewellery, I dont possess loads but I have cleaned the silver things and polished the gold things.  I have decided to wear a beautiful old watch of my dads which is well over 30 years old, I just have to find a new watch strap that will go well, it has to be black leather for definite. The watch is only a Timex but it is just so beautiful.  I have decided to wear things I like rather to try to be fashion conscious, anyway what is fashion???  The quote below is from the character Miranda Priestly in Devil Wears Prada.
 ~ This... stuff? Oh... ok. I see, you think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select out, oh I don't know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you're trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don't know is that that sweater is not just blue, it's not turquoise, it's not lapis, it's actually cerulean. You're also blindly unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar de la Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves St. Laurent, wasn't it, who showed cerulean military jackets? And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of eight different designers. Then it filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic Casual Corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and so it's sort of comical how you think that you've made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you're wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room. From a pile of stuff.~

Interesting eh lol?